In my essay, I am going to analyse how Hollywood has recently started to represent Africa and problems facing Africa differently, and how producers have noticed the financial potential in the genre, possibly leading to more audience pleasing commercial based films, rather than films trying to accurately portray the lives and problems facing Africa, and its people.
For example no American studios would produce the 2005 film Lord of War, leading to the involvement of a few independent companies, such as the controversial anti-American company Lions Gate Films (Fahrenheit 9/11). This probably benefited the film, by allowing more freedom from the audience-pleasing, money-conscious producers who would have lightened the tone and gone for a more pro-America film possibly at the expense of the plot.
After the critical success of Lord of War and The Constant Gardener, producers wanted to cash in by continuing the genre and making more action based high concept thrillers such as Blood Diamond. While they would argue that these more mainstream films help widen the audience, they can also be seen as having a negative effect on a genre of films that was trying to make a serious point rather than serious money.
Lord of War was one of the first modern films to tackle issues about the arms trade in Africa. The film stars Nicholas Cage as a Ukrainian
Immigrant living in New Jersey, New York; who after witnessing a mob attack decides that he should sell guns. As Yuri Orlov (Cage) is the narrator of the film he can also directly inform the audience of facts and statistics about the arms trade, without cheapening the film and poorly writing them in to the characters’ dialogue. This allows him to deliver the memorable lines that the film is famous for, such as when he decides to start gun running and states that a restaurant always makes money, because people always need to eat, and so he would sell guns to “fulfil another basic human need: the need to kill”. The narrating creates great effect as it makes proximity between the audience and the situation, as well as the non-diegetic aspect that distances us from it.
5 comments:
This is excellent so far, Will. make sure that you get all of your main ideas down, and then I will add further comments.
Very good Will. Make sure you get all your main points down, and then i will add further comments.
hi wil, thought your study was good so far isnt it.
and i put it to u will foster that u... could take a look at Platoon and Apocalypse Now and use the war issue as sumthin to mention about events. that sort of relates to weapon export i guess LOL.
not quite up to standards william, you need to sort your life out.
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